1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a process for the tenderisation of meat cuts, which latter term is used herein to refer to dressed meat (including poultry, but excluding fish and whalemeat) in piece form ranging in size from individual cuts or slices up to whole sides of whole carcasses, including whole poultry carcasses, e.g. chicken, turkey, duck, etc., but not including comminuted meat, e.g. mince or sausage meat. Most particularly the invention is concerned with the tenderisation of meat cuts such as ham, bacon joints, pork shoulders, tongues, and beef cuts such as silverside and brisket.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the curing of such meat cuts the dressed meat is usually injected with a brine solution, usually by multi-needle injection or by stitch or artery pumping, followed in sequence by resting, tumbling and/or massaging and finally cooking. Alternatively the meat cuts can simply be tumbled or massaged in the brine solution. Typical pickling procedures are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,565,539, 3,683,789, 3,922,357.
Typically the brines used in such pickling processes will comprise one or more inorganic salts, particularly chlorides (sodium chloride), phosphates, nitrates or nitrites, organic compounds such as suger, amino acids, protein extracts, and/or flavouring agent and tenderising agents.
As tenderising agents it is known to use proteolytic enzymes, and in GB-A-1 355 175 proteolytic enzymes are used in combination with a tragacanth as a thickening agent and which allegedly assists and improves the distribution of the enzyme throughout the meat. Other natural gums such as gum arabic, agar, guar gum, gum karaya and locust bean gum are specifically disparaged as either not providing the necessary setting properties or providing too viscous a solution to be injected by normal injection means.
In JP-A-39147/82 abstracted in Food Technology, Vol. 37, No.1, January 1983, xanthan gum is disclosed as a thickening agent for addition to pickling solutions used in the preservation in the raw state of foodstuffs, primarily foodstuffs of vegetable origin, but also mentioning pickled products such as whalemeat, cuttle fish, salmon and sea cucumbers. In JP-A-39147/82, xanthan gum is added to the pickling solutions in an amount of from 1% or less, usually 0.001 to 0.5% based on the total amount of raw pickling material, with the object of thickening the pickling solution to aid penetration and retention of the pickling medium by the pickled product. The thickening effect of xanthan gum in pickling solution is specifically contrasted with other gums such as guar gum, locust bean gum and carrageenan which are alleged to be ineffective in such pickling solutions.
The use of xanthan gum as a thickening agent in aqueous media is also to be found in FR-A-2318926 and FR-A-1502 883.